Here are a couple of my favorite photos from Corduroy Appreciation Day. This first one was sent to me by Portland resident Adam Schafer. He wasn’t able to attend our party but he may have outdone us all with this amazing Corduroy Appreciation Cake.

Long time readers know that I have a possibly unhealthy love of corduroy fabric. I have corduroy pants, jackets, and hats. Even my laptop case is lined in corduroy, which was a big selling point for me when I bought it. When I first considered moving to Portland from Washington, DC I thought, “That is a city with a relaxed sense of fashion and many cool rainy days. I could probably wear a lot of corduroy there.”

In some sense every day is a day to appreciate corduroy, but in another sense there is only one true Corduroy Appreciation Day, as declared by the venerable Corduroy Appreciation Club. That is 11|11, the date that most resembles corduroy. And this Friday being 11|11|11, it is the date that most resembles corduroy, ever. (Except for 11|11|1111, but I’m pretty sure the people of that time had yet to discover essential comforts like modern medicine, indoor plumbing, and finely waled fabrics.)

Corduroy Appreciation Club founder Miles Rohan has planned an amazing series of celebratory happenings in New York this week, including the installation of the Corduroy Messiah. Unfortunately I cannot be there. However I have teamed up with Portland’s The Hop and Vine to organize a celebration of our own. From 5-8 pm this Friday, The Hop and Vine’s new chef will be serving a special menu of twists on food from the Golden Age of Corduroy, with items such as smoked pork, beef, and lamb Swedish meatballs. We’ll also have a special Two Item Rule cocktail for the occasion, named after the Two Item Rule in effect at the Club’s official meetings. Wear one item of Corduroy, get a dollar off. Wear two items and get two. Wear three and, well, you still only get two dollars off, but you will have won the admiration of all who gaze you upon you.

What’s in a Two Item Rule cocktail? In a nod to the fabric’s reportedly English origins, I aimed to use only English or English-inspired ingredients to create a drink as smooth and lush as corduroy itself. It features the very lightly sweetened Old Tom style gin, authentic sloe gin, and cream sherry, a type of sherry originally targeted to the British market.

Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist. The Dios Baco cream sherry is not too sweet, so adjust the recipe if using a different sherry. And definitely use real sloe gin, not the cloying artificial stuff from the liquor store’s bottom shelf. Consume while wearing at least two items of corduroy or while reclining on a corduroy couch.

My December column for Culinate is up and this month I recommend seven notable holiday beers worth trying. The focus is on widely available beers rather than obscure — but often delicious! — local ones. This was a fun article to research, pretty much requiring me to buy lots of high-alcohol ales and invite friends over to try them.

On the spirit side of things, one of my favorite men’s lifestyle websites, Magnificent Bastard, invited me to contribute a few recipes to their holiday cocktail guide. As an aspiring magnificent bastard myself, it’s an honor to be included. Follow their main page here.

November is officially Pants Awareness Month, which makes this a good day to recommend some of my favorite trousermongers, the wacky guys at Lindlands’ Cordarounds. They’ve invented reversible smoking jackets, authentic black sheep sweaters, bike to work pants, vagisoft pockets, and, most ingeniously, the word’s only corduroy pants with horizontal waling.

It’s no secret that I think corduroy is the king of fabrics (not quite literally), but the hot and humid DC summers made cords a strictly fall and winter thing. It’s why I had to move to Portland. But last year Lindlands launched (literally) new summer weight cords, proving their lightness by giving flight to a pair with the aid of a few helium balloons. They sounded good, but I wasn’t quite sold until I saw where they landed: Nearly two weeks later, they hit ground at Spring High School. As in Spring, TX, the town where I grew up, and the very high school where my mom taught English for many years. If that’s not a sign from the pant gods, I don’t know what it is.

I bought a pair and now I’m converted to horizontal corduroy. If you or someone you know is pantless, check ‘em out.

After 60 years, the Men’s Dress Furnishings Association, the trade group that represents American tie makers, is expected to shut down Thursday.

Association members now number just 25, down from 120 during the 1980s power-tie era. U.S. tie companies have been consolidating. Others have closed because of overseas competition as the U.S. market share for American-made ties has fallen to about 40%, from 75% in 1995.

Members have lost interest. But the biggest reason for the group’s demise: Men aren’t wearing ties.

I especially like these paragraphs:

Some members of the neckwear association sensed the trend two years ago when, at the group’s annual luncheon in New York, a number of people turned up tieless. Marty Staff, chief executive of men’s clothing company JA Apparel Corp., which has a big neckwear business, was one of them.

“It was deliberate,” explains Mr. Staff, who says he wanted to make a statement to his colleagues. “Historically, the guy wearing the navy suit, the white shirt and the burgundy tie would be the CEO. Now he’s the accountant,” Mr. Staff explains.

And this one nails it:

The problem for neckwear designers, as for regular guys, is that a tie no longer automatically conveys the authority and respectability it once did, even if it does cause some people to call you sir. In fact, it can be a symbol of subservience and of trying too hard.

The obligatory necktie is an absurd requirement, especially in a swampy town like Washington, DC where so many people walk, Metro, bus, or bike to work. It’s hot, constricting, and adds considerably to the cost of a wardrobe. Many men hate their ties too much to bother making them look good, and ties are no longer the only way to convey an image of authority. Their time as an everyday necessity has passed.

Do you know what tomorrow is? It’s 11/11, the day that most resembles corduroy as declared by the incredibly awesome Corduroy Appreciation Club.

The New Yorker tells the story of the club in this intriguing article. A question left undecided is what drink most resembles corduroy. One member suggests a Manhattan, which with its complex hues of brown and red is a fine choice. However I think the most fitting drink is Guinness. With its soft, creamy texture, brown and black coloring, and conspicuously upward-flowing bubbles suggesting verticality, it’s the ultimate choice for 11/11.

If the epidemic of pastel Ugg boots of several years ago proved anything, it’s that Vanderbilt women should beware of strange fashion trends from island nations. That lesson must have faded from institutional memory. As Chad reports from our weekend excursion to Nashville for our college’s annual Rites of Spring concert, a new atrocity has swept across the Vanderbilt fashion landscape:

The muumuu is perhaps the worst of all worlds: it is like placing a price ceiling on attractiveness: everyone above a 5 becomes a 5 by wearing one, but no one below a 5 can become more attractive by wearing one… I’m told that no one on campus wore this before Friday, and that it was some kind of spontaneous mass early adoption. Some wore them with bows. Some wore them with belt buckles. Why? WHY??? Try a google image search on muumuu: do you notice a theme? People in muumuus look (a) very, very large, (b) very, very large and pregnant, or (c) very, very large and male. One of the pictures even has a cow wearing a muumuu. If you have a figure, or anything even close to resembling an approximation of a figure, why would you destroy it so thoughtlessly? Surely there are other ways to feel comfortable on a breezy day? What happened to the summer dress? The bikini top? Even a t-shirt?

[Update: The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that the shirt is saying that by tying our purchases to ethical causes, consumer capitalism has sort of come around to Communism. This is lame though. Capitalism isn't anti-charity any more than Communism is pro-exchange. So what's the point?

Radley has confronted the obliviousness behind "Soviety chic" in the past. See here and here for two good posts on how it trivializes atrocities that ought to be better remembered.]

Judging by the frequency with which the word “Ugg” is showing up on the list of search phrases that lead people to my website, winter must be coming on fast. For example, the list includes the search phrase “sorority ugg” (which should really read “Sorority? Ugh!” But I digress…). As a caution to my Vanderbilt friends, I note that the list also includes the phrase “ugg nashville,” so it appears that the Vandy sorority girls are once again looking to acquire these pastel travesties for the coming winter season.

One searcher found the site with the question “Can I still wear uggs in 2005?” As she will have hopefully learned from my previous post on the subject, the answer is a resounding “no.” Wearing them in 2004 was regrettable, but wearing them in 2005 would be criminal. If you must insist on looking fashionably silly in the new year, your best bet is to wear a poncho instead.

In fact, the poncho trend seems to have already sown some confusion among the Ugg wearers, as evidenced in the search phrase “ugg gaucho boots women.” No no no no no! Gauchos don’t wear Uggs, they wear ponchos! Come on now, did Clint Eastwood wear powder blue emu boots with fluffy lining in A Fistful of Dollars? Of course not, he only dressed like that off the set.

Finally, as a parting fashion tip from Eternal Recurrence, please don’t ever wear Uggs and ponchos together. The culture clash is just too much to bear and unless you possess the macho-panache (panacho?) of Clint Eastwood, you just won’t be able to pull it off.

Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, bartender, cocktail consultant, and magician in Portland, Oregon. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in the print or online editions of The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times, Reason, The Oregonian, and other publications. His book on beer cocktails, Cocktails on Tap, is forthcoming from Stewart, Tabori, and Chang in 2015. [Photo by David L. Reamer.]